US politics

Is America Flowing Demographically to the Left? Why Trump’s White Evangelicals aren’t the Force they were under Reagan or Bush

Charleston, W.V. (Special to Informed Comment) – Maybe 2020 is a turning point – one that won’t be clearly visible until the future. Maybe it marks the end of the four-decade epoch when the white evangelical “religious right” had enough power to tip American elections to the GOP. White evangelicals fought fiercely for Republicans this […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

From the KKK to Europe’s new “Jihadis”: The Hidden Logic of seemingly Random Acts of Terror

Glenn E. Robinson

By Glenn E. Robinson | – Prior to his November 2 shooting rampage in Vienna, Kujtim Fejzullai’s affinity for ISIS was known to Austrian police, given his earlier unsuccessful attempt to cross Turkey’s border to join the ‘caliphate.’ But as far as is known, Fejzullai never actually made contact with ISIS before he swore his […]

Donald Trump

Israel accused of using Trump’s last days as President to deny Palestinian Rights

Mohammed Samaana

Belfast (Special to Informed Comment) – The period between the American election in November and the inauguration of the new president in January is often considered by the Israeli leadership an opportune time to conduct operations against the Palestinians, including those with high foreseeable civilian casualties. The outgoing president doesn’t care to interfere, while the […]

Climate Crisis

One last Time, Trump lies to the International Community about the Climate Emergency and Green Energy

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – DW gives a clip of Trump’s unhinged video rant to the G20 summit against the Paris Climate Accord on Sunday, which is being held virtually this year. Trump said, according to Kevin Liptak at CNN, “The Paris accord was not designed to save the environment, it was designed to kill […]

Democracy

America’s not-so-Model Elections: So much for Exceptionalism

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Following weeks of speculation and worry about the possibility of violence and/or crasing technical systems the United States executed a largely flawless presidential election. At least that was how the major media portrayed the events of early November. Once again American exceptionalism provided the opportunity to sing […]

Bill of Rights

Presidents are Paid Public Servants, Not Aristocrats above the Law: Lessons from Rousseau, Jefferson and Tang China

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – “Let the constitution of a government be what it will, if there is but one man in it exempt from the laws, all the other members must necessarily be at his discretion.” Perhaps we should thank Donald Trump for demonstrating the truth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s insight. No sooner […]

Joe Biden

Can Progressives Push Biden to take on Washington’s Sacred Cows: Foreign Policy and the Pentagon?

Danny Sjursen

In this mystifying moment, the post-electoral sentiments of most Americans can be summed up either as “Ding dong! The witch is dead!” or “We got robbed!” Both are problematic, not because the two candidates were intellectually indistinguishable or ethically equivalent, but because each jingle is laden with a dubious assumption: that President Donald Trump’s demise […]

Donald Trump

As Daily Cases climb toward 200K, “Trump is Playing Golf” (to the same accompaniment as “Whitey on the Moon”)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The G-20 summit, attended virtually by the leaders of the 20 countries with the largest gross domestic products, was orchestrated this year from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. That is a scandal in itself, since the Saudi regime is responsible for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 and […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s Parting Shots for Israel

Asa Winstanley

( Middle East Monitor) – At the start of this year, in this column, I argued that the annexation of the West Bank was coming, one way or another. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were the remaining 22 per cent of historic Palestine left for the Palestinians in 1949, after the ceasefire between […]